Just wanted to thank all of your for your support thus far! I'm glad most of you seem to be enjoying this story :-)

Chapter Seven

A couple of weeks later, Naruto sat at Ichiraku Ramen, eating his favorite food alongside the members of Team Ten who were taking a break from their usual barbeque. They were all involved in conversation when he suddenly felt two familiar chakra signatures approaching.

Ducking his head out of the curtain to confirm, he quickly polished off his bowl before slamming some money onto the counter and making his way towards the Hyuga and Uchiha.

Shikamaru and Choji didn't seem perturbed by the abrupt departure, but Ino was surprised and leaned out to get a look at where her fellow blonde was heading. When she saw who exactly he was running towards, her eyebrows went up a bit. Since when were Sasuke and Hinata friends? She saw Sasuke say something to his companion and her eyebrows practically disappeared into her hairline when she saw him blush slightly at whatever it was the bluenette said in reply.

What the hell was happening and how was she not aware of it?

Meanwhile, Sasuke and Hinata were making their way down the street, trying to agree on what to eat for lunch after their spar. The Uchiha hated that she always wanted dango or something sweet. When he had gotten fed up with her shooting down sushi (she wasn't a fan of seafood) and pushing her disgustingly sweet agenda on him, he had sarcastically said, "I'd rather eat ramen."

She was quiet for a moment before deciding - much to Sasuke's dismay - that ramen sounded good to her and began heading in the direction of Ichiraku's. The Uchiha sighed in defeat and once again wondered why he had so many stubborn friends. He thought he did a pretty good job at coming off as unapproachable. There were perks to having the reputation of being able to kill with a look, but for some reason he still had a group of people who cared about him and made it a point to spend time with him.

Even if that secretly made him happy, it was a secret he would take to the grave. Otherwise he'd never hear the end of it from his teammates.

Speaking of, he raised an eyebrow when he saw his orange-clad teammate making his way toward them. Naruto had been spending even more time than usual around him, and most of this extra time happened to coincide with time he was spending with Hinata.

"Here comes your boyfriend," he said to Hinata, who frowned at the teasing.

"I told you there is nothing going on between us and I would appreciate it if you stopped calling him that."

It had been a few weeks since that conversation with Naruto when she had promised herself she would get over him. Unfortunately, the world still had it in for her as she had seen Naruto more in the last few weeks than in all the months leading up to that conversation. For some reason, Kiba had been avoiding or cancelling a lot of their team training and Shino had been busy working with his father on establishing a new hive. So, she had been training more often with Sasuke and Naruto had started popping up more and more whenever they were together.

Instead of distancing herself from him, as she knew she should if she ever wanted to get over him, Hinata relished the attention she was getting from the Uzumaki. He had stated during one of their first accidental meetings that he didn't know enough about her and had since been attempting to rectify that by asking her all kinds of questions about her life.

It was just so hard! She knew she needed to get over him, and she knew that spending even more time with the guy who could make her whole day brighter just by smiling at her was not the best way to go about it. She may be a fool, but she was a fool in love and there was no stopping it.

Sasuke had taken notice and apparently found it amusing enough to comment on, but his teasing was unappreciated as her unrequited feelings were still a sore spot.

He shrugged off her displeasure and said, "I'll stop calling him that when you finally admit you still have feelings for him."

Annoyed that he was still pushing she shot back, "Only when you do the same for Sakura."

Her eyes had widened at her own boldness, and she'd sheepishly looked to the side, missing the lightest of blushes that had touched Sasuke's cheeks at her words.

Unfortunately, two sets of blue eyes had not missed said blush and were letting their imaginations run wild at what it could mean.

A bit disturbed, yet undeterred by what he perceived as the flirting between Hinata and Sasuke, Naruto called out their names, flashing a big smile at the young woman he had found himself thinking about more and more as each day passed.

It was wrong to hit on his best friend's girl. It was wrong and against all kinds of bro codes and he knew he should be ashamed, but he just couldn't bring himself to feel bad about it. It wasn't like the Uchiha had laid claim to her or anything. Naruto hadn't outright asked him about their relationship since that day of their destructive spar, but his subtle questioning was met with nothing informative. Naruto felt like if Sasuke was dating Hinata, and whatever else he liked to pretend they weren't doing, then he should say something, let people know she was unavailable.

Because the longer they were unofficial, the longer he could live in denial and hope that she still had some feelings for him. And the longer he lived in denial and spent obscene amounts of time intruding on Hinata and Sasuke's personal time, the more he learned about the beautiful young woman. And the more he learned about her, the more he found himself falling for her.

When he had first figured out that she loved him, he had wanted to ask her on a date to give her a chance. She was always kind to him, always supportive, and he thought that she was just the right kind of person to potentially date. The fact that she knew him and had had feelings for him before he was considered a hero put her way above any of the fangirls who threw themselves at him.

Now that he had actually started spending more time with her, though, he was starting to realize that he wanted to ask her on a date because he now liked her. He wanted to spend time with her, give her presents, make her smile, and bask in her sweet supportive words and her beautiful blushes.

He was in deep.

So, that was like 4 different points of view in like 1000 words so I'm sorry if it was confusing. I tried to transition from one to the other as best I could, but if it's too wonky let me know and I'll try to edit some more. And we finally got a little more SasuHina friendship in there as well as some NaruHina feels! Yay!

Let me know what you thought, please :-)